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Guitar Hero is the first game in the Guitar Hero series. Guitar Hero was released for the PlayStation 2 console on November 8, 2005 in North America, April 7, 2006 in Europe and June 15, 2006 in Australia.

Guitar Hero received a Greatest Hits reprint on 2006 in North America, and was also reprinted in a bundle pack with Guitar Hero II on October 31, 2007 in North America and July 3, 2008 in Australia for PlayStation 2.

Gameplay

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In Guitar Hero, players use the strum bar along with the fret buttons to play notes that scroll down the screen along a fretboard. The Easy difficulty only uses the first three fret buttons, that is, the green, red, and yellow. The Medium difficulty uses the blue button in addition to those three, and Hard and Expert use all five buttons. If playing Career on Expert, all note will be in play.

Scoring

Guitarhero-gameplay

Guitar Hero's screen during gameplay.

A single note in Guitar Hero is worth 50 points. After a player correctly plays 10 notes correctly in a row, the score is multiplied by 2. This continues until a 4x multiplier is achieved. Star Power can double the score at any multiplier, and can bring the multiplier to its highest possible 8x. A single note would then be worth 400 and a chord worth 800. As you keep the streak going, the Rock Meter (opposite side of the multiplier), goes up. If the player misses a note, the streak breaks and the Rock Meter goes down. If the Rock Meter hits the other side, the player will fail the song with no score except the percent of said failed song and has an option to retry or to go to another song.

Main menu

Career

Career is the primary game mode of play in Guitar Hero. Players progress through the game by beating every song in a tier, then they play the encore song for that tier. Once the player has played every song in all six tiers (five in Easy), they have completed career mode.

Completing songs in Career gives the player cash which they can be used to unlock content from the Unlock Shop (not available on Easy difficulty), including guitars, bonus songs, characters, videos, and more.

Quick Play

Quick Play mode allows the player to play any unlocked song. However, saved high scores will not be displayed in Quick Play's song selection screen.

Multiplayer

Guitar Hero features only one multiplayer game mode where two players take turn playing small parts of the Guitar track in competitive play, aiming for a high score. This specific multiplayer game mode would be known as "Face-Off" in Guitar Hero II and onward.

When there aren't two guitars connected, said mode is locked.

Tutorials

Tutorials teach the player how to play the game. The tutorials will focus on the first three frets for the most part including the green note, red note, and yellow note.

  • Basic lessons: This tutorial lesson will teach the player how to strum notes. This also includes playing different note colors and playing long notes and chords. It will also briefly teach the player how Rock Meter and Scoring works.
  • Star Power lessons: This tutorial lesson will teach the player how to achieve and activate Star Power. This also includes the use the of the whammy bar to acquire more Star Power energy on long notes during a Star Power phrase. Once Star Power is activated by pressing the Select button or tilting the guitar controller, other upcoming Star Power phrases will be disabled until the player's Star Power meter runs out of energy so use Star Power wisely.
  • Advanced lessons: This tutorial lesson teach the player how to perform hammer-ons and pull-offs (HOPOs). Hammer-ons and pull-offs are glistened single notes that can be tapped without strumming as long as you are in a combo. They appear after another note that is less than than an eighth note distance.
    • In the first Guitar Hero, to perform a hammer-on (playing a note from left to right), you must hold down the lower note you just strum before tapping (or hammering on) the HOPO on the right and keep it held as you tap the HOPO note. To perform a pull-off (playing a note from right to left), the next note's fret must be held before releasing the higher note.
    • Compared to newer Guitar Hero entries, hammer-ons and pull-offs in the first Guitar Hero are more difficult to play with these strict rules in mind, thus it's usually recommended to strum HOPO notes in the first Guitar Hero instead of attempting to hammer them in (fast) guitar solos.
    • These strict rules for HOPO notes were dropped ever since Guitar Hero II where players can simply tap HOPO notes without any additional rules other than being in a combo.

Soundtrack

Main article: Setlist in Guitar Hero

The game features 47 playable songs; 30 of these tracks are covers of the originals played during Career Mode. The additional 17 songs are by lesser-known groups are unlocked as bonus songs through Career Mode's Unlock Shop. Many of these groups feature members of the Harmonix development team, while some are indie Boston area groups. Drist's guitarist, Marcus Henderson, provided lead guitar on 20 of the game's 30 cover tracks.

All cover tracks are credited on screen with the phrase "as made famous by" (e.g., "I Love Rock & Roll, as made famous by Joan Jett & the Blackhearts").

Additionally, two extra songs "Trippolette" and "Graveyard Shift" are found within the game files but are not accessible by normal means without a third-party cheating device such as Action Replay, Codebreaker, or Gameshark, but they can also be unlocked from the shop for $0 in the unofficial Guitar Hero Deluxe game mod developed by MiloHax 2.0.

Reception

Guitar Hero was very positively received by many major reviewers. Jeff Gerstmann of Gamespot praised its set list and accessibility to newcomers.[1]

References

Smallwikipedialogo.png This page uses content from Wikipedia. The original article was at Guitar Hero. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WikiHero, the text of Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
v · t · eGames of the Guitar Hero series
Console games
Main series games Guitar Hero · Guitar Hero II · Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock · Guitar Hero World Tour · Guitar Hero 5 · Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock · Guitar Hero Live
Expansion games Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s · Guitar Hero: Smash Hits · Band Hero (main page)
Band-centric games Guitar Hero: Aerosmith · Guitar Hero: Metallica · Guitar Hero: Van Halen
Portable games
Guitar Hero: On Tour series Guitar Hero: On Tour · Guitar Hero On Tour: Decades · Guitar Hero On Tour: Modern Hits
Guitar Hero Mobile series Guitar Hero III Mobile · Guitar Hero III: Backstage Pass · Guitar Hero World Tour Mobile · Guitar Hero 5 Mobile · Guitar Hero World Tour Mobile: Backstage Pass · Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock Mobile
Other games Band Hero (NDS) · Guitar Hero (iOS) · Guitar Hero Live (iOS)
Electronic toys Guitar Hero Carabiner · Guitar Hero Air Guitar Rocker · Kellogg's Guitar Hero promotional toys · Guitar Hero 2nd Edition Carabiner
Miscellaneous games and apps
Arcade games Guitar Hero Arcade
Cancelled games Guitar Hero 4 (NDS) · Guitar Hero Greatest Hits (NDS) · Guitar Hero 7 · DJ Hero 3D
Companion apps Guitar Hero VIP Pass (X360) · Guitar Hero Live Companion (iOS)
DJ Hero series DJ Hero (Renegade Edition) · DJ Hero Mobile · DJ Hero 2
Bundle packs Guitar Hero I & II Dual Pack (PS2) · Guitar Hero II & Aerosmith Dual Pack (X360) · Guitar Hero: On Tour & On Tour: Decades Box Set (NDS) · Guitar Hero III & Aerosmith Dual Pack (Wii) · Compilation Disc: DJH / BH / GH5 / GH:GH (X360)
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